Dutty Boukman

Dutty Boukman was an enslaved man in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, believed by some historians to have been transported there from Jamaica or brought directly from West Africa. He worked as a coachman and Vodou priest, or houngan, and his ability to read reportedly gave him added standing among enslaved communities, some accounts suggesting his name derived from his literacy, as ”Boukman” echoes the English ”book man.”

On the night of August 22, 1791, Boukman presided over a clandestine religious ceremony at Bois Caïman, a wooded area in the north of the colony, gathering enslaved leaders from surrounding plantations. According to tradition, Boukman delivered a searing speech invoking a shared African god against the god of their enslavers, calling for vengeance and liberty, while a priestess sacrificed a black pig in a ritual that bound the attendees to revolt.

Within days, the uprising that Boukman helped ignite swept across the colony's Northern Plain, burning plantations and beginning the Haitian Revolution. Boukman himself was killed in battle just weeks later, in November 1791, but the revolt he sparked continued for thirteen years under later leaders including Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, culminating in Haitian independence in 1804.